Hillary Clinton is the person that everyone-from various political
positions-loves to hate. Of course, she's the favorite nemesis of the
far-right pundit- and blogosphere. Check your cable listings; Foxy News
(notice the array of neo-Nazi-card-carrying blondes fawning over O'Reilly
and Hannity) celebrates a round-the-clock Hill-bashing from now until
Election Day in 2008, if she gets that far. The Hillary-haters on rightwing
media are so vehement they need napkins for the foam frothing from their
mouths. Rush Limbaugh has a special spittoon installed. The microphone
is often replaced after sounds become inaudible.

But the Hill-bullies
are not exclusive to Faux and Raunch. Chris Matthews, the otherwise floundering
middleweight chameleon, has a special, heavyweight hankering for Hillary
hate. His animus appears to be especially personal, as if she's somehow
slighted him, or refused him a date. He misses no opportunity to scorn
her smile, ridicule her delivery, or sneer at the color of her dress.
He spares nary a minute bolstering any opponent she might have, be he
Obama, Edwards or even a Republican. He's like the DC sniper, lying in
wait, always on the hunt for Hillary. His guests try to change the subject,
embarrassed for his custom-fetishized caviling.

Not only on cable
do we find them. They lurk in the real news, among the New York
Times editorial staff or in the far left blogosphere. Here Hillary's
haters may be more fretful than angry. For them, Hillary is "Bush-lite,"
or worse, a neoconspiratorialist posing as a Democrat while really harboring
hopes for world domination. She's the ultimate Clintonian silly putty
who's not so silly, who actually harbors a secret Nazi within. You can
see it leaking out if you look close enough.

How can Hillary
represent such antithetically absolute evils to such radically opposed
people? According to the far right, she's the abortion-mongering, socialized-medicine
hawking, neo-Marxist-Orwellian, abolish-your-freedoms-for-the-sinister-secularist
satanic state candidate. For others, she's the epitome of DLC sellout,
rightwing conciliating, Bush-licking, Project for a New American Century
politics. She's the Manchurian candidate that changes shape to match anyone's
hopes and fears: the rightwing impostor posing as liberal (the leftist
view), or a real evil socialist posing as a liberal (the rightist view).
And, the two sides often borrow each other's metaphors for poignancy.
Take the vigilante ad concocted by the non-affiliated Obama fan, which
featured Hillary as Big Sister in true UN form.

But, Hillary cannot
possibly be all these evil things to all these people, can she? Something
is happening here and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. and Ms. Jones?
Here goes.

The fear of getting
our way or not getting our way-this is what Hillary represents to the
poles of American politics. Given that the two views represented above
cannot both be correct, neither is. Instead, Hillary may actually be the
moderate liberal that she seems to be-without hopes of socialist-statist
domination at home (the rightist fear), or visions of world domination
abroad (the leftist fear). She cannot be both. So I suggest that she is
neither.

I am not endorsing
Hillary Clinton for president as the CLG Chair, nor even as an individual.
Hillary Clinton does not at all represent my first choice in the Democratic
primaries. That being said, however, I am proposing to demythologize and
right-size the image of Hillary on the left. (I know I'll gain no hearing
from the right.) I'm also asking those left of center to consider why
so many right-wingers are prone, as if it were a sexual compulsion, to
beat on her. In addition to socialism, does she also represent a feared
matriarch, a feared mother, or a spouse out of control?

I believe it is
demonstrable that the left is being bitten and infected by the rhetoric
of the right when it comes to our presidential candidates, most particularly
when it comes to Hillary Clinton.

I am also saying
that Hillary represents a difficult position, that of reason rearing its
head after many years of superstition and militancy-appearing as a loathed
retribution to the fanatics of faith-based "reality," while
at the same time as an inadequate harbinger of purgation to those who
would instantiate a reformation of mega-Lutheran proportions.

I'm not saying
that we should be happy to take what we can get. But if we continue to
join in all those rein-in-Hillary games of the right, we might just end
up with Rudolph or Huckabee.